Eleazer Williams

Eleazer Williams (May 1788 – August 28, 1858) was a Canadian clergyman and missionary of Mohawk descent.

Williams was born in Sault St. Louis, Quebec, Canada, the son of Thomas Williams, and was educated at Dartmouth College. He published tracts and a spelling book in the Iroquois language, translated the Book of Common Prayer into Iroquois, and wrote a biography of Chief Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen (Thomas Williams).

Missionary career

In 1815, Williams joined the Episcopal Church. In 1817, Bishop John Henry Hobart appointed Williams to be a missionary to the Oneida people in upstate New York.

In 1820 and 1821, Williams led delegations of Native Americans to Green Bay, Wisconsin, where they secured a cession of land from the Menominee and Winnebago tribes in the Fox River Valley at Little Chute and along Duck Creek. Historians have disputed the significance of Williams' leadership to this migration compared to that of the Oneida people themselves, including Oneida leader Daniel Bread. The following year Williams made his home there and was married to a Menominee woman named Madeleine Jourdain. In 1826 he was ordained a deacon.

In 1839 and afterwards, Williams began to make the claim that he was the French Lost Dauphin. During the 1850s he openly became a pretender, but he died in poverty at Hogansburg, New York.

Williams was buried at Saint James' Cemetery in Hogansburg on August 28, 1858. In 1947, his remains and tombstone were moved to Holy Apostles Cemetery in Oneida, Wisconsin.

Publications

Title page for Gaiatonsera ionteweienstakwa

• The book of common prayer, according to the use of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America : Translated into the Mohawk or Iroquois language, by the request of the Domestic Committee of the Board of Missions of the Protestant Episcopal Church. New-York, H.B. Durand, 1867. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/697994178
• Gaiatonsera ionteweienstakwa, ongwe onwe gawennontakon. A spelling-book in the language of the seven Iroquois nations. Plattsburgh [N.Y.] : Printed by F.C. Powell, 1813. [1]
• Good news to the Iroquois Nation: a tract, on man's primitive rectitude, his fall, and his recovery through Jesus Christ. Burlington, VT: Printed by Samuel Mills, 1813. [2]

Title page from Iontatretsiarontha, ne agwegon ahonwan igonrarake, ne raonha ne songwaswens = A caution against our common enemy

• Iontatretsiarontha, ne agwegon ahonwan igonrarake, ne raonha ne songwaswens = A caution against our common enemy. Albany [N.Y.] : Printed for the Albany Religious Tract Society by Churchill & Abbey, 1815. [3]
• Life of Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen : alias Thomas Williams, a chief of the Caughnawaga tribe of Indians in Canada. Albany, N.Y. : J. Munsell, 1859. [4]
• The salvation of sinners through the riches of divine grace : two homilies pronounced at Oneida Castle in the audience of the Oneida Indians at their eighth triennial anniversary since the conversion of six hundred pagans of that tribe to the Christian faith : on the 8th of August 1841. Green Bay, W.T. : Printed at the Republican Office, 1842. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/277220738
• Selections from the Psalms and hymns according to the use of the Protestant Episcopal church in the United States of America. New York, Protestant Episcopal tract Society, 1853. [5]

Further reading

• Hauptman, Laurence (2008). Seven Generations of Iroquois Leadership: The Six Nations Since 1800. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-3165-1. 

• "Williams, Eleazer 1788 - 1858". Dictionary of Wisconsin History. Wisconsin Historical Society. Retrieved 2011-04-26. 

• Sylvain, Phillipe (1985). Williams, Eleazer (Éléazar) - Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online (University of Toronto). Retrieved 2011-04-26. 

• Wight, William Ward; Chicago Historical Society (1903). Eleazer Williams not the dauphin of France: a lecture read before the Chicago historical society December 4, 1902. Fergus' historical series (35). Fergus Printing Company. Retrieved 2011-04-26.